Life comes a full
Circle for Solzhenitsyn
The year 2006 for Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been the year
when his
career has turned a full
circle – reported Andrew
Osborn from Moscow. The erstwhile Soviet dissident of the
late sixties is now part of the Russian mainstream. His
books were banned in the then Soviet Union. Nevertheless
they remained popular among the brave, albeit in a
clandestine manner. It was inconceivable that a day would
come when his long bearded features would be displayed on
Moscow’s thoroughfares or a TV adaptation of his
controversial
novel “the First Circle” would attract so
much attention and elicit so much of effervescent reviews.
The novel, which is believed to depict a part of the real
life of Solzhenitsyn, portrays Joseph Stalin in poor light
by revealing stories of scientists and mathematicians being
compelled to work for KGB special design projects and
thereby earn a reprieve from hard labour camps. The camps
operated under the disguise of innocent facades but in
reality were concentration camps torturing the inmates to
slow deaths ultimately. Enemies of the state and revolution
were thus liquidated.
The moral dilemmas that the trade off generated were based
on the real life experience of Solzhenitsyn in one of those
camps on the outskirts of Moscow.
It is ironical that the TV portrayal of his novel has been
sponsored by the present Russian state as if to atone for
its predecessor’s imbecile attitude towards the outstanding
writer and statesman of Russia.